Anyone with half an ounce of brains immediately knew in 2009 that the Nobel Peace Prize committee was making itself look foolish for giving Barack Obama its top award even though he had only been president for about five minutes. Now the group's former secretary is admitting that the whole thing was a huge mistake. Nobel's former secretary, Geir Lundestad, told the media that he thought giving Obama the award would spur him to great accomplishments. Instead, Obama did nothing of note over the next eight years. Lundestad addressed the foolhardy decision in his recently published autobiography, according to the...

The Nobel Peace Prize on Friday was awarded to a Congolese doctor and a Yazidi former captive of the Islamic State group for their work to highlight and eliminate the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad “have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its announcement. “Denis Mukwege is the helper who has devoted his life to defending these victims. Nadia Murad is the witness who tells of the abuses perpetrated against herself and other.” Mukwege has treated thousands of...

Winner of the award announced on Friday in Oslo The winner of this year’s Nobel peace prize is set to be announced on Friday in Oslo, and while the committee does not make the nominees public there has been plenty of speculation over who could win the prestigious award. All that is known is there are 331 nominees – 216 individuals and 115 groups – according to the Nobel committee. The selection process is highly secretive, but here is a list of potential winners based on bookmakers, that includes controversial figures such as Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. Kim Jong-un...

• Can Trump go from “fire and fury” to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize? • The President is currently among the favorites to receive the award, behind only Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-In • Is there value in picking Trump or the Korean leaders? Donald Trump was met with chants of “Nobel! Nobel! Nobel!” at one of his Michigan rallies back in April, and back then it seemed ridiculous that a man who once threatened to nuke North Korea could be in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet here we are. Donald Trump is now one of the...

Novelist Sir VS Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize in literature, has died aged 85, his family have said. Sir Vidia, who was born in rural Trinidad in 1932, wrote more than 30 books including A Bend in the River and his masterpiece, A House for Mr Biswas.

North Korea on Saturday accused the U.S. of undermining the spirit of last month’s summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un after what it says were “regrettable” talks with a delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry, accusing the U.S. of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning its nuclear weapons, came shortly after Pompeo’s delegation left the country. "We had expected that the U.S. side would offer constructive measures that would help build trust based on the spirit of the leaders' summit ... we were also thinking about...

Former President Jimmy Carter believes that President Donald Trump has a legitimate case to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize if he brokers a denuclearization deal with North Korea. Carter won the award in 2002. “If President Trump is successful in getting a peace treaty that’s acceptable to both sides with North Korea, I think he certainly ought to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Carter to Politico Magazine’s “Off Message” Podcast. “I think it would be a worthy and a momentous accomplishment that no previous president has been able to realize.” Trump is set to meet with...

Two Norwegian lawmakers have nominated President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize after the Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Christian Tybring-Gjedde and Per-Willy Amundsen, lawmakers with the populist Progress Party, told Norwegian news agency NTB on Wednesday that Trump “had taken a huge and important step in the direction of the disarmament, peace and reconciliation between North and South Korea.”(continued)

The Norwegian police said Tuesday they had closed an investigation into Donald Trump's fake Nobel Peace Prize nomination after failing to identify the person behind it. The Norwegian Nobel Institute filed a police report earlier this year after receiving a seemingly fraudulent nomination of the US president for the prestigious prize. Suspicion mounted that the nomination was submitted by a person suspected of committing identity fraud to appear legitimate, as only a select group of individuals -- including members of parliament and government, former laureates and some university professors -- are entitled to propose names.

The organisation that decides the Nobel Prize for Literature has said it will not announce an award this year, after it was engulfed in a scandal over sexual assault allegations. The Swedish Academy has been in crisis over its handling of allegations against the husband of a member. She has since quit, as have the academy's head and four other members. The academy says it will now announce the 2018 winner along with the 2019 winner next year. The scandal is the biggest to hit the prize since it was first awarded in 1901. Apart from six years during the...

North Korea has released three US detainees in the country, according to media reports, and it meets some of President Donald Trump demands for Pyongyang to demonstrate sincerity before its upcoming US summit. Kim Dong-cheol, Kim Sang-deok, and Kim Hak-seong — three US citizens detained in North Korea for years — have been released from a suspected labor camp and given health treatment and ideological education in Pyongyang. The news follows Trump's hawkish National Security Adviser, John Bolton, calling for the release of the detainees as a way for North Korea to demonstrate its sincerity in talks. North Korea has...

WASHINGTON – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said President Trump could qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize depending on the outcome of ongoing negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “We’re a long way from that, but let’s see," Pelosi said in reference to the prize. "There’s always an opportunity for a president of the United States to qualify. Let’s see how it goes."

SEOUL, April 30 (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in said U.S. President Donald Trump should win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, a South Korean official said on Monday. "President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace," Moon told a cabinet meeting, according to a presidential Blue House official who briefed media. Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday pledged to end hostilities between the two countries and work towards the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula...

The attack on Syria’s chemical weapon facilities was not merely aimed at Syria – it was also a message aimed at any nation/entity that might be considering the use of chemical weapons It says something very profound about the horrors of chemical warfare that even given the inherent insanity of war the use of gas is universally considered beyond the pale. The civilized nations of the world agree – chemical warfare is anathema, no exceptions. Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite and namesake of the famous “Nobel Prize,” thought that the use of dynamite in war would be so catastrophic that...

The paper broke the news on Tuesday when it published the testimony of 18 women claiming to have been assaulted or raped by one of the most influential figures in Stockholm's cultural scene. - 'Everyone has always known'- The accused man's name has not been published in the media due to Swedish laws on the presumption of innocence. But his identity is generally known by the public as he is a high-profile person in cultural circles and his name has appeared in online chat forums discussing the issue. He did not respond to AFP's request for a comment, though he...

A campaign group seeking a global ban on nuclear arms won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, given the award by a Nobel Committee that cited the spread of weapons to North Korea and said the risk was growing of nuclear war. The award to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was unexpected, particularly in a year when the architects of the 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran had been seen as favorites for achieving the sort of diplomatic breakthrough that has won the prize in the past.

Hospital officials say Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo's condition has worsened and that he's in respiratory failure. The hospital treating him in the northeastern city of Shenyang released a statement on Wednesday, 2 days after its announcement that Liu was in a critical state. Officials added that they explained to his family that Liu needs artificial help to breathe, but that they declined it. The writer was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009, after criticizing the Communist Party for its one-party rule. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while in jail. Liu was...

A near-record 318 people and organisations are in the running for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Institute said on Thursday, a motley crew believed to include Syria's White Helmets, Donald Trump and Pope Francis.

A near-record 318 people and organizations are in the running for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Institute said on Thursday, a motley crew believed to include Syria’s White Helmets, Donald Trump and Pope Francis. The names of the nominees are kept secret for 50 years, but those entitled to nominate candidates – including lawmakers and government ministers, former laureates and some university professors – are free to reveal the name of the person or group they have nominated. As a result, the list is believed to include the White Helmets, jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, and Edward Snowden,...